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LONGBOi
LONGBOi is my silly little zine series. I have so many things I have written or want to write about but can't be arsed writing a proper essay on. LONGBOi lets me make this your problem anyway.
Why LONGBOi?
The name LONGBOi comes from a recurring discussion about long hot water bottles. I have a dinosaur one from B&M that accompanies me through my chronic pancreatitis flares and a visitor told me her daughter-in-law refers to hers as "Longboy". I have since heard the same from multiple other people. While Jono and I were making the first of these zines, he suggested it as a name. The styling is merely Internet Poisoning.
Philosophy
Lazy masters
LONGBOi zines are designed around the Lazy Master method. I can't find any information about this online and am thus compelled to attribute the term to Jono's circle of printmakers. Basically, you print the same file on both sides of a sheet of paper and when you slice it up, it has both the front and reverse on each zine.
This printing method is the reason why each LONGBOi is 105mm by 297mm. Each A3 sheet gives four zines, or two per A4 sheet.
YAML
Each LONGBOi begins with metadata because I find it funny. I chose YAML because it is human-readable, takes up little space, and I can just copy and paste it from my Obsidian notes.
But beyond the humour, it also allows me to preserve something I love about Obsidian – versioning. You can see the exact date a LONGBOi was printed. You can see how long it has been since I created the original Obsidian note, even. You can directly compare the dates on one LONGBOi version to another and see how long it has been since I updated it.
Typefaces
Typefaces typically used in a LONGBOi include:
- Orbitron, designed by Matt McInerney and licenced under OFL.
- JetBrains Mono and licenced under OFL
- PicNic, designed by Mariel Nils and licenced under CUTE
Occasionally, you will also find icons from Font Awesome's free collection.
Separations
LONGBOi was created with Gaada's two-drum Risograph (MH9350) in mind. Most issues are therefore printed with just two colours. I typically use blue and yellow. Some issues also include fluo pink.
Paper
LONGBOi is printed on Cairn Straw Cream 100gsm.
Licence
As with almost everything I make, LONGBOi is licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0. You can do whatever you want with them provided you attribute me and release it under the same licence.
Distribution
I intend to make a Patreon page to distribute both physical and digital copies of LONGBOi. More on that soon.
Markdown Issues
Each issue starts as a note in my Obsidian vault. File names that begin with "Longboi" were written specifically with LONGBOi in mind; others are just notes I adapted. Links to each one are here:
- Longboi - Computer Grievances
- Adverts are intrinsic to good worldbuilding
- Longboi - Albums That Aren’t Just a List of Songs
- Longboi - Email Tips
- 2025-06-28-drawing-piss-christ
- Imperfect work should be shared
- Longboi - Foreign Language Records You Should Listen to
- Fae-like entities in 2000s children's cinema
- Longboi - Most Hated Shark Films #in-press